My Buddy Christmas party

So, if I may, I'm going to take a moment and brag about my daughter. These are the Christmas art projects she's made at her My Buddy and Me class the past few weeks, and check out this snowman!

Both the teacher, Ms. Diane, and a student teacher observing that day, remarked on how good she had done the face. I didn't help her at all.

Cora enjoyed making all her Christmas crafts, and they're helping decorate our house this week.

On Friday, we had our final My Buddy class for the fall session. All the kids got a certificate, and Cora was happy to pose with Ms. Diane.

We love her teacher! She is so friendly and welcoming, and since she has worked with Cora since March, she has done very good with drawing her out.

You who know Cora know that she isn't always friendly with other people. But, now, she always says hello to Ms. Diane, and is happy to chat with her.

At the moment, our plan is to enroll Cora in the city-run 3-year-old preschool program, especially since Ms. Diane teaches the class that meets nearest our house. That would be two days a week, two hours a day, starting in March or April.

On Friday, besides free play and art projects, the class enjoyed a little Christmas party. Here you see Cora enjoying a cupcake, by licking all the frosting off the top.

I started to encourage her to take off the paper and eat the cake, before wising up. She was happily eating her orange and string cheese, and I was going to complain that she wasn't eating the cake? Huh?

A fun week

Cora and I have had a great week together, with lots of fun Christmas activities.

First off, on Monday a playgroup we attend had a Christmas party.

Cora had a lot of fun, as the family who hosted have a fabulous train table, dollhouse and play kitchen.

The kids also decorated cookies and had a Secret Santa gift exchange - Cora was thrilled with her Thomas book. We had a nice lunch together, too.

On Tuesday, Harvey and Elissa came over to play, which was a lot of fun.

And on Wednesday, we played with Genia, Ave, Johnny and Owen with a picnic lunch at our little park.

Wednesday evening was Skipper Club, and you can see Cora here getting her badges from Miss Heather as the group completed another unit.

After the badge ceremony, the kids sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus and ate a cupcake in His honor.

On Thursday, Cora and I met Heather at Starbucks. Besides being Cora's teacher, Heather is the communications leader for MOPS, and I work on the monthly newsletter under her guidance.

After our coffee, Cora and I went to Old Navy and we got Cora a few new pieces of clothing.

We returned home to the fabulous news that Dean and Jen had their baby, a little boy name Euan James! Such exciting times, and we are so happy for them!

On Friday, we had our final My Buddy and Me class of the session, and another Christmas party. More on that later!

Christmas lights

On Sunday we took part in one of our favorite SClarita Christmas traditions - driving around admiring the brilliant light displays.

We started our evening out at Starbucks, where we met Grandma and Grandpa and everyone got drinks.

We drove through a few neighborhoods, and then parked and walked through our favorite, Wakefield Court in Saugus.

This community has been putting on a great show for about 15 years. When we walked through, lots of neighbors were gathered together, sitting on lawn chairs on their driveways, with (portable) fire pits blazing. In one open garage, a small group of musicians (including one of Stacey's co-workers) sang Christmas carols.

Cora was very happy to find several Winnie the Poohs and Tiggers, though she kept her eyes out for Woody and Buzz. She didn't spot them.

She's recently watched the original Toy Story, with us fast-forwarding through the "scariest" toy scenes, and she's been playing with my old Buzz Lightyear toy.

Many of the homes on Wakefield have a verse from the long version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" on a board in front of their home, as part of their decoration.

Stace has been reading the poem to Cora each night before bed, and she can recite most of it. You can hear her here sharing the finale.

Rain and Baking

Cora created a fun game to play this rainy morning - leaping from tile to tile.

She also pushed her doll around in the stroller, saying she was taking her to Stroller Strides, Disneyland and McDonalds.

Her doll is also named Ducky - or Duckie, as some of my friends have suggested we spell it, since she's a girl.

And, she spent time running back and forth across the house; who needs warm sunshine? When it was raining a few nights ago, I heard her calling out to me around 10 p.m. When I checked on her, she was wondering what that noise was - was Daddy in the shower?

On Friday, after our My Buddy and Me class, we got Cora's hair cut. Doesn't it look beautiful? This time, we had the stylist braid it in the front.

On Thursday, Cora and I did some baking.

We made a large batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, using the pumpkin we selected from Underwood Farms in October. (We had frozen the flesh - it wasn't sitting around for two months!)

We also made some chocolate crinkle cookies. This is a variety my grandma always made at Christmas, when she would make tons of different types of cookies.

Cora spent most of the preparation time standing at the sink, playing with the dirty dishes and water.

She had a great time, and even took a short break from the dishes to help fill the muffin pan with paper liners. If I may say so myself, all turned out very well.

Seasonal decor

We're officially in Christmas mode!

On Saturday night we put on the proper music and started decorating...

Stace and Cora did a great job on the tree, with Cora handling the ornament placement for the lower half of the tree.

Does it go without saying that the lower half of the tree was very ornamented?

Stace also put up Christmas lights in the playroom - they serve double purpose, looking festive and adding needed light! Still ought to figure out a better permanent lighting situation for that room... or perhaps we should keep Christmas with us all through the year in there.

Cora loves our in-house lights, and the outside lights.

When we're driving around, she say to me repeatedly, "Mummy. When you see a house with lights on, you have to tell me."
She says it very firmly, with the emphasis on "tell me."

I can't wait to take her to the neighborhoods with the visible-from-space displays. I know she'll love it this year!

Christmas Weekend Events, Part 1

Ahhhh, the annual tree lighting ceremony at the hospital...

This year we bundled up and walked over and met up with Genia, John, Ave, Johnny and Owen.

The kids had a grand time running around the grassy area in front of the tree, and Cora also enjoyed playing with baby Owen.

The weather was very wintry - scarves, hats and gloves everywhere - which added to the experience.

We're so very blessed to have such neat friends right down the street! Genia and the kids came over today to play, and it was a great way to pass a rainy morning.

On Saturday, we took Ave and Cora to Placerita Nature Center, which hosted a Christmas craft-making event. The girls had fun running around outside, and then decorated pine cones, made snowmen and strung beads together into necklaces. For $2 per craft, it was a fun morning. I also decorated a yule log with greenery, berries and tiny pine cones.

It was really fun having Ave with us - the two girls are two years apart, and Ave is a great big sister. It was really nice for Stace and me to be out with the two girls - kind of a preview of what we have to look forward to!

After dinner on Saturday, we put up the tree and decorated the house - more on that coming soon!

20 Week Update (Caution, spoiler ahead!)

Look at our little baby! We had our 20-week ultrasound Friday and this is my favorite photo - see how Ducky's sucking a thumb? You can clearly see head, arm and hand, and foot/leg here.

Here's a nice shot of the head, body and spine.

A top view - see the head, eye sockets, hands and feet? A little alien-like, but very cool nonetheless.
And another nice overall shot, with head and body. These shots are all so much better than our first u/s with this baby, and I'd say better than our ultrasounds with Cora, too. (Don't forget to click a photo to see it bigger.)

So here I am Saturday at 20 weeks, above, and at 21 weeks, below, with Cora. Not a heckuva lot of difference, in my opinion. I've been feeling Ducky moving around for a couple of weeks now, though not strongly enough for Stace or Cora to feel it yet. I didn't feel Cora move until I was 21 weeks along.
I'm generally feeling good these days. I still have morning sickness most days, but it's infrequent and mostly manageable by keeping up my eating. I won't complain! I've heard of so many women who not only have really bad sickness, like needing IVs and hospitalization because they're losing so much weight, but have that same level of sickness throughout their pregnancies.

And now, for those of you who've read this far, a little bit of excitement: We found out at our ultrasound that Cora's going to get ... a baby sister! Though a boy would have been nice, we are happy in the long run for Cora. I think same-sex siblings can have such a special relationship - I need to look no further than Stace and his brother for proof of that. And Melanie and I have a great bond too, though different, since we are nine years apart.

At this point, Cora is getting used to the idea, you could say. She wasn't all that happy when we told her this morning, and after her nap, I asked her about having a baby girl, and she insisted she was, in fact, getting a brother. Oh well. The u/s photo looked pretty clear to us, and the technician noted that "she could be wrong, but she never has been yet."

So, onward toward decorating a girly room!

Christmas is on its way

With the start of December, and Christmas on its way, I put the lights on the house and hung up the Advent Calendar.
The calendar was a gift to us from my Mum and Dad last year. They recently sent us some goodies to put in the daily pockets.



Tonight we told Cora all about the countdown to Christmas and the idea of one pocket per day, as she picked out the first treat, a Cadbury's chocolate coin.
I'll be very surprised if these chocolates make it all the way to Christmas Eve.
Luckily, and maybe my Mum had this in mind, we have extras.

Cora has a few words of thanks for her Advent Calendar.

Happy Re-Anniversary Trip!

Taking advantage of the four-day weekend, Stace and I decided to steal away for a two-day trip up the coast on our own. What a fabulous time we had together, just a week or so after passing the eight-year mark of being together.

We weren't just recreating our days-before-Cora, we were recreating our ill-fated sixth anniversary trip to the same hotel in Carpinteria.

Those of you who know us well might have noticed my failure to mention our anniversary in September. We had made plans to spend two nights away (which would have been our longest trip yet without Cora), and then the morning sickness hit. We canceled one night, and tried to enjoy a one-night trip, but I was pretty sick for much of our little excursion. I think our biggest memory will be of Stace pulling over several times for me on our way home.

So, this time around, we really appreciated our time together. My family picked up Cora around 1 on Friday, and took her to Knott's Berry Farm for the day. We got on the road, and made it up to Santa Barbara by about 4. We did a bit of shopping among the throngs of Black Friday shoppers on State Street, got some dinner, and then watched a movie back in our room.

On Saturday morning, we headed down to the beach in Carpinteria, and then walked through the adorable downtown. We stumbled onto a Holiday Faire, with lots of vendors, live music and food. Such fun!

As much as I love hanging out with our daughter, it was great to walk along at our own pace (without stopping every few steps to hurry along a toddler), stopping in shops with breakable items we normally have to skip.

We then went back up to Santa Barbara. Stace got our bikes out of the back of the car, and we rode down to the wharf for lunch and then along the beach bike path.

It was just stunning in Santa Barbara, and in Carpinteria, and we truly enjoyed our time together on our own.

Cora was a good girl for Grandma and Grandpa; it's great that she's old enough to be away from us for an overnight trip. I do hope that when Ducky arrives, we don't let another two-plus years go by before we get away on our own again!